Customer care in a digitalized world

“Customer experience has never been hotter”. These were the words written in a trend analysis published at the end of 2016 by Forbes Magazine. They are not exactly alone in highlighting the significance and value of customer experience: if you do a quick Google search, you get more than 34 million widely varying hits for the term. There are many companies and organizations that have realized that digitalization has a fundamental impact on customer relationships. It is of course all about the way customers experience the services and products themselves, but also about the way the company behind these services treats its customers – that is, the actual customer service offered. Meanwhile, driven by the younger generation, today’s customers have much higher expectations of their suppliers than say 10 years ago because of the novel fast mobile services now on offer. One bad experience is enough for a customer to switch service providers with a couple of clicks. And there is also the risk of the customer then communicating on social media, which doesn’t tend to do much to strengthen a brand. Customer experience is increasingly crucial to all companies today. It’s an important source of differentiation. At the same time, digitalization is gradually changing the playing field in terms of companies’ interaction with their customers. The technical tools now available are creating new opportunities to meet customers’ expectations. But the challenge is to strike the right balance between human interaction and automated services. In the article “Customer care in a digitalized world” by Johan Wickström, published in our Hello Transcom magazine.